Growing older is a fact of life, but people’s hopes, fears, pre-conceptions and experiences surrounding the ageing process are richly diverse. As part of the Festival of Social Science organised by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to highlight how social science impacts on our daily lives, researchers from Swansea University are organising a unique exhibition of thoughts and reflections of younger and older people on what it means to grow old.

The event, entitled ‘Narratives of Ageing’, will show a succession of two-minute video clips – ‘digital stories’ – of a group of students and a group of older people reflecting on life and growing older.

“Often we think of ‘the elderly’ as simply a demographic section of the population,” says Dr Katharine Daneski, one of the event’s organisers. “But when you see people speaking about what it means to get old and reminiscing about their own lives, you realise that these are individuals whose own stories often challenge stereotypes about both youth and old age.”

By presenting the views of both young and older people, an interesting contrast is achieved, says Dr Daneski, with sometimes surprising experiences emerging. “For example while older people tend to agree that they had less freedom than the youths of today, they found ways around the restrictions imposed on them. By contrast, today’s youngsters realise they have a lot of freedom, but often choose to reign themselves in – they do not always fully exploit their freedom.”

The event will also allow members of the public to record their own digital stories on ageing. In addition there will be an exhibition of posters describing the research that is being done at Swansea University into ageing.

“We want to encourage people to think about ageing and reflect on some of the themes that will be presented,” says Dr Daneski. “We also hope they will get a better idea of how social sciences are active in this field, and how researchers are addressing subjects that arise within the area of ageing.”

Digital video recordings are widely used in fields such as community arts, and the Swansea research team is investigating whether this type of technology and approach could have a role in the social sciences. “It is a potentially interesting research tool, because participants have total freedom to explore the topic thus reducing any bias from being led by a researcher’s questions,” Dr Daneski says.

Source: Economic & Social Research Council

The theory that a higher metabolism means a shorter lifespan may have reached the end of its own life, thanks to a study published in the journal Physiological and Biochemical Zoology. The study, led by Lobke Vaanholt (University of Groningen, The Netherlands), found that mice with increased metabolism live just as long as those with slower metabolic rates.

The theory that fast-living animals die young, known as the rate-of-living theory, was first proposed in the 1920s. The premise is simple: Aging is the inevitable byproduct of energy expenditure. The faster you expend energy, the faster you age, and the sooner you die. It remained a prominent theory of aging until recently, when comparisons across broad animal groups cast doubt on it. For instance, birds have significantly higher metabolisms than mammals of similar size, yet the birds live much longer.

Vaanholt’s study was designed to test the rate-of-living theory among individuals of one species—in this case, mice.

For their experiment, Vaanholt and her team followed two groups of mice through their entire lives. One group’s environment was kept at 71 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius), and the other group’s at 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius). The colder group had to expend more energy to maintain body temperature, and according to the rate-of-living theory, should therefore die sooner than the warm group.

But that’s not what happened.

“Despite a 48 percent increase in overall daily energy expenditure and a 64 percent increase in mass-specific energy expenditure throughout adult life, mice in the cold lived just as long on average as mice in warm temperatures,” the authors write. “These results strengthen existing doubts about the rate-or-living theory.”

The finding is consistent with an experiment Vaanholt conducted previously. That experiment manipulated metabolism in mice through exercise rather than temperature. Mice that expended more energy over a lifetime through exercise had the same lifespan as those that did not exercise.

Both studies cast significant doubt on a theory that just may have burned itself out.

Source: University of Chicago Press Journals

Natural burial is often thought of as a green option that takes place in the countryside for non-religious people, but according to researchers at the University of Sheffield, that is only part of the story. ‘Lots of different approaches to natural burial have evolved since 1993 when the first site was opened,’ explains Mr Andy Clayden, who is leading the research team, which includes Professor Jenny Hockey and Dr Trish Green, ‘they cater for people who want a more informal setting in keeping with the person they want to remember. There is no conflict with faith.’ The topic is to be discussed at an event on Natural Burial: Do we need a Headstone? to be held in Sheffield on March 14 as part of the Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC) Festival of Social Science.

There are now over 200 natural burial grounds across the UK ranging from extensions to local authority cemeteries to sites owned by charitable trusts or private individuals. The project, which was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, is looking at the range of services on offer and the wider impact of natural burial both on the people involved and the landscape. The researchers have already visited 20 sites and are continuing to interview managers, bereaved people, funeral professionals and members of the local community. They will also be conducting an in-depth study of four sites with different interpretations of what natural burial means.

Early findings suggest that natural burial is attractive to people who want to construct their own way of remembering a relative. Natural burial grounds vary tremendously in terms of the habitats they are trying to create or protect. For example some sites offer a specific guidance on what trees or wildflower seeds can be planted whilst other burial grounds may have a more relaxed and permissive approach. There are sites where the dead are almost completely anonymous; the field may be cut for hay or grazed by sheep.

‘People have told us they like to visit sites where they can hear the birds or a stream in a wild life habitat,’ says Andy Clayden. ‘Some people are put off by the formality of cemeteries and are uncomfortable with the conventions and rules involved in conventional burials. As well as catering for very individual ways of memorialising some sites have created new ways of bringing the bereaved community together at the burial ground. Examples include a Christmas carol service and candle-lit procession and a summer garden fête with live music.’

The research suggests that the farmers and their families who offer land for burials are very enthusiastic about the new movement. ‘Some of them live in remote upland areas and they find that by providing burial space they have a new role which requires them to ‘open their door’ to a new community whom they welcome onto and into their land. Many of them remain a point of contact with the bereaved,’ says Andy Clayden.

Source: Economic & Social Research Council

Credit: Illustration by Sandra Olsen, Carnegie Museum of Natural History

The earliest known domesticated horses were both ridden and milked according to a new report published in the March 6, 2009 edition of the journal Science. The findings by an international team of archaeologists could point to the very beginnings of horse domestication and help explain its early impacts on society.

Researchers from Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, Pa., and the universities of Exeter and Bristol in the U.K., uncovered the evidence in Kazakhstan, the world’s largest landlocked country situated in Central Asia. Data gathered by archaeologists supports the hypothesis that the horse-rich area in the vast, semi-arid, grassy plains, or steppe zones, east of the Ural Mountains in Northern Kazakhstan, contributed largely to the development of two neighboring cultures, the Botai in north-central Kazakhstan and the Tersek in the west.

“Having a domesticated animal that could be eaten, milked, ridden, used as a pack animal and potentially for haulage would have had a tremendous impact on any society that initiated or adopted horse herds,” said Sandra Olsen, curator of anthropology at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Olsen directed several archaeological teams that excavated sites in Kazakhstan from 1994-2002. Her work in the Botai Culture sites of Krasnyi Yar in 2000 and Vasilkovka in 2002 was supported by the National Science Foundation. Her earlier work in the region was supported by National Geographic.

Archaeologists say horse domestication may have begun in Kazakhstan about 5,500 years ago, about 1,000 years earlier than originally thought. Their findings also put horse domestication in Kazakhstan about 2,000 years earlier than that known to have existed in Europe.

The research team used various techniques to discover that horses provided food and milk, to show that domestic horses differed from wild horses from the same region, and to prove that horses were harnessed and possibly ridden in the fourth millennium B.C., in Kazakhstan.

Researchers used a novel method of analyzing residue from fat-soluble lipids found on ancient Botai pottery to find traces of fats from horse milk, leading to the conclusion that people consumed horse milk at the beginning of the Copper Age some 5,500 years ago. Mare’s milk is still a staple of consumption in Kazakhstan where it’s usually fermented into a slightly alcoholic drink called ‘koumiss.’

Additionally, examinations of ancient bone remains showed that horses were similar in shape to Bronze Age domestic horses but different from more ancient wild horses from the same region, suggesting that people selected wild horses for their physical attributes, which were exaggerated through breeding.

“It is quite surprising that the Tersek and Botai horse metacarpals differ significantly,” said Olsen. “The Tersek culture and the Botai culture are considered to be the same culture by many archaeologists–they are separated by just two days’ ride on horseback, and they’re very similar in terms of their material culture. To find there may have been a difference in the sizes of their horses was something that I did not expect.”

The team also used a technique to search for ‘bit damage’ caused by bridling or harnessing horses. Researchers found tell-tale traces of the use of a thong bridle on the gap between the teeth of the lower jaw. A thong bridle is simply a leather thong draped over this gap and knotted under the chin, with the trailing ends acting as the reins. Plains Indians called this a war bridle or racing bridle and it most likely is the type of bridle that was developed first.

“The domestication of horses is known to have had immense social and economic significance, advancing communications, transport, food production and warfare,” said the Science paper’s lead author, Alan Outram of Exeter. He said the findings are significant because they change “our understanding of how these early societies developed.”

Some comparisons can be made to the early horse-herder culture of the Plains Indians in America, but with some important differences. First, American Indians did not go through the process of capturing wild horses, taming them, and breeding them to become more well-mannered.

Instead, when the horse was re-introduced to North America by the Europeans–having evolved in North America, spread to Asia and Europe, before going extinct in the New World about 10,000 years ago–it was fully domesticated. “American Indians had the advantage of receiving an animal that was already selected to be more docile and controllable,” said Olsen.

“Although the Plains Indians often had to develop their own tack, harnesses and equipment used for riding, they often saw the bridles and other equipment that the Spaniards and other Europeans had.

“There is no question that there are similarities in the Plains Indian societies and some cultures on the Eurasian steppe that depended heavily on the horse, but we must take care in carrying that analogy too far,” Olsen said.

Source: National Science Foundation

Developing countries with extremely large debts have found it easier to obtain debt relief from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank than countries with smaller debts. This is due, in part, to an established theoretical economic model which advises against debt relief in the case of smaller debts. A new economics thesis from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, shows that, contrary to long-held assumptions, debt relief also leads to higher levels of own investment in the case of smaller debts. The same thesis also shows how diversification can help poor smallholders in Zambia.

It has long been agreed that debt relief is a more productive solution when a country’s debt is so large that the country is unlikely to be able to repay it. It has also been recognized that if a country’s debt is smaller it is best not to grant debt relief since the country burdened by the debt will then have less incentive to improve its own economy. This approach is based partly on a theoretical model established by the American researchers Jeffery Sachs and Max Corden. New Swedish research indicates that the mechanism actually works in the opposite way.

In his thesis, Sven Tengstam, a researcher in economics at the School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg, has further developed Jeffery Sachs and Max Corden’s model and found that the results differ if development is viewed over a longer period of time.

“The earlier analysis took an extremely short-term view”, says Sven Tengstam. “It only focused on what happens precisely at the time the debt relief is granted. Our study shows that, in the longer term, debt relief will lead to an increase in own investment. The investment is made at a later stage, but the total volume of own investment increases. Also, retaining the debt will mean that a country will remain poor for some time, making it less able to improve its own economy.”

Sven Tengstam is careful to point out that, in general, countries’ debts should of course be repaid, though he also states that the application of the earlier model has prevented even appropriate debt relief from being granted.

The thesis also includes an article on the fight against poverty in Zambia. The countryside in Sub-Sahara is the poorest region on earth. Interviews with 5,000 smallholder households in Zambia presents evidence that it is beneficial for smallholders to have more than one source of income. He has also researched the factors affecting a household’s sources of income: Education opens up opportunities for non-agricultural wage work and own-business and agricultural wage work is used partly as an emergency solution when yields from a smallholder’s own land are insufficient.

“Secure access to land and clear right of ownership are important factors in reducing poverty”, says Sven Tengstam. “It should also be made easier for the more peripheral regions to integrate into the Zambian economy, which will then require investment in infrastructure. It is also important to ensure access to loans.”

Source: University of Gothenburg

Researchers have discovered that a long-defunct gene was resurrected during the course of human evolution. This is believed to be the first evidence of a doomed gene – infection-fighting human IRGM – making a comeback in the human/great ape lineage. The study, led by Evan Eichler’s genome science laboratory at the University of Washington and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, is published March 6 in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics.

The truncated IRGM gene is one of only two genes of its type remaining in humans. The genes are Immune-Related GTPases, a kind of gene that helps mammals resist germs like tuberculosis and salmonella that try to invade cells. Unlike humans, most other mammals have several genes of this type. Mice, for example, have 21 Immune-Related GTPases. Medical interest in this gene ignited recently, when scientists associated specific IRGM mutations with the risk of Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory digestive disorder.

In this latest study, the researchers reconstructed the evolutionary history of the IRGM locus within primates. They found that most of the gene cluster was eliminated by going from multiple copies to a sole copy early in primate evolution, approximately 50 million years ago. Comparisons of Old World and New World monkey species suggest that the remaining copy died in their common ancestor.

The gene remnant continued to be inherited through millions of years of evolution. Then, in the common ancestor of humans and great apes, something unexpected happened. Once again the gene could be read to produce proteins. Evidence suggests that this change coincided with a retrovirus insertion in the ancestral genome.

“The IRGM gene was dead and later resurrected through a complex series of structural events,” Eichler said. “These findings tell us that we shouldn’t count a gene out until it is completely deleted.”

The structural analysis, he added, also suggests a remarkable functional plasticity in genes that experience a variety of evolutionary pressures over time. Such malleability may be especially useful for genes that help in the fight against new or newly resistant infectious agents.

Source:Public Library of Science.

The water levels in the Dead Sea – the deepest point on Earth – are dropping at an alarming rate with serious environmental consequences, according to Shahrazad Abu Ghazleh and colleagues from the University of Technology in Darmstadt, Germany. The projected Dead Sea-Red Sea or Mediterranean-Dead Sea Channels therefore need a significant carrying capacity to re-fill the Dead Sea to its former level, in order to sustainably generate electricity and produce freshwater by desalinization. The study (1), published online this week in Springer’s journal, Naturwissenschaften, also shows that the drop in water levels is not the result of climate change; rather it is due to ever-increasing human water consumption in the area.

Normally, the water levels of closed lakes such as the Dead Sea reflect climatic conditions – they are the result of the balance between water running into the lake from the tributary area and direct precipita-tion, minus water evaporation. In the case of the Dead Sea, the change in water level is due to intensive human water consumption from the Jordan and Yarmouk Rivers for irrigation, as well as the use of Dead Sea water for the potash industry by both Israel and Jordan. Over the last 30 years, this water consumption has caused an accelerated decrease in water level (0.7 m/a), volume (0.47 km³/a) and surface area (4 km² /a), according to this study.

Abu Ghazleh and colleagues developed a model of the surface area and water volume of the Dead Sea and found that the lake has lost 14 km3 of water in the last 30 years. The receding water has left leveled sections on the lake’s sides – erosional terraces – which the authors recorded precisely for the first time using Differential Global Positioning System (DGPS) field surveys. They were able to date the terraces to specific years.

The authors point out that this rapid drop in the level of the Dead Sea has a number of detrimental con-sequences, including higher pumping costs for the factories using the Dead Sea to extract potash, salt and magnesium; an accelerated outflow of fresh water from surrounding underground water aquifers; receding shorelines making it difficult for tourists to access the water for medicinal purposes; and the creation of a treacherous landscape of sinkholes and mud as a result of the dissolution of buried salt which causes severe damage to roads and civil engineering structures.

To address the mounting stress on water resources in the Dead Sea basin and the environmental ha-zards caused by its lowering, the authors suggest that the diversion of Jordan water to the Mediterra-nean coast could be replaced by desalinization of seawater, causing the recession of the Dead Sea to be considerably slowed, and buying time to consider the long-term alternatives such as the Red Sea-Dead Sea Channel or the Mediterranean-Dead Sea Channel.

The authors conclude that either of these channels will require a carrying capacity of more than 0.9 km3 per year to slowly fill the lake back to its levels of 30 years ago and to ensure its long-term sustai-nability for energy production and desalinization to fresh water. Such a channel will also maintain tour-ism and potash industry on both sides of the Dead Sea.

Source: Springer

The Human Fertilization and Embryology (HFE) Act becomes law in April 2009¹. It promises groundbreaking legislation on assisted reproduction and embryo research², but was its development really a landmark in national scientific decision-making?

With contributions from leading figures in the worlds of science, policy, ethics and the media, the ESRC Genomics Forum³, based at the University of Edinburgh, is holding a conference examining how this new legal framework was determined, and who really makes the decisions related to science policy in Britain.

The event is part of the ESRC’s Festival of Social Science and takes place on Thursday 12th March 2009, 9am-5pm, One Great George Street, Westminster.

Conference speakers include:

* Dr Stephen L Minger, Director, Stem Cell Biology Laboratory King’s College, London
* Phil Willis MP, Chair of the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Select Committee
* Dr Katy Berry, Department of Health
* Fiona Fox, Director, Science Media Centre
* Professor Steve Yearley, Director, ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum
* Sarah Norcross, Director, Progress Educational Trust

Discussions will explore:

* What was the formal process that ultimately led to the HFE Act?
* What does it mean to make decisions ‘democratically’ in such a controversial area?
* What impact did key stakeholder groups – including scientists, the media and the Church – have on the public debate and legislative outcome?

What can the social sciences bring to our understanding of the public debate and decision-making process?

Source: Economic and Social Research Council

A new Washington state program designed to help victims of domestic violence increase their knowledge of how to use technology safely and help minimize the risks that technology can pose when one is in an abusive relationship has been evaluated as highly successful.

The Technology Safety Program, developed by the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence, was judged to be needed, useful and effective by Jerry Finn, a University of Washington Tacoma professor of social work who also evaluates the effectiveness of human services programs. The program also was judged to be very helpful by nearly 500 women who tested the program at 18 locations throughout Washington. The program, according to Finn, can be easily adopted for use in other states or nationally.

“Victims of domestic violence often are reaching out through technology to gain access to information, services and support, often without understanding how that same technology can be used to track and monitor them. This program educates victims on Internet communications, cell phones and global positioning systems and keeping their personal information safer,” said Finn.

“Domestic violence is built around control, not anger, and an abusive partner often limits a woman’s access to information and support. Monitoring computer activity is one of many ways to control a spouse. In a shelter a woman needs to keep her identity secret, but a fax number can be tracked to her location. Abusive partners also can track their victim’s cell phone calls or can use a keystroke logger on a computer to intercept and read e-mail. This program shows women ways in which they might be monitored and steps they can take to prevent being stalked and tracked.”

Finn noted that cyber stalking and the use of technology is increasing, but the safe use of technology can be empowering to women seeking to escape an abusive relationship.

Findings from the evaluation came from 479 domestic violence victims ranging in age from 15 to 74. The women were predominantly white (67 percent) or Hispanic (17 percent) and three-quarters of them had children. Twenty-five percent had their browser history monitored, 24 percent had been repeatedly threatened, insulted or harassed by e-mail, 18 percent had someone monitor their e-mail and 17 percent had someone use their password or PIN number.

Staff members at the 18 participating agencies, primarily shelters, were given training in the program, which was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. How the program was delivered at each agency varied slightly, but women who participated viewed a Powerpoint presentation. It included information about technology safety, what could happen to a person and how to prevent such things as identity theft, revealing their browser history, how to be safe in a chat room, how to set up an e-mail account without using their real name and how to protect them from being followed with a GPS device.

Part of the training included a section on Internet safety for parents with children. Abusers often communicate with or search for a victim’s children through social networking sites or other online venues. Children sometimes post location information such as the town they live in or the school they attend, potentially compromising the family’s safety. The program helps parents talk to their children about safety when using chat rooms, not meeting someone they met on line or not divulging personal information online.

Some agencies also provided individual follow-up sessions and some also offered women training to help improve their computer and technology skills.

Finn said satisfaction with the program was high with 86 percent of the women reporting high satisfaction and 10 percent saying they were somewhat satisfied. However, he said it is unknown how much of this information the women used after the training.

In addition, he said the program met its three primary goals of increasing domestic violence victim’s knowledge and safe use of communications technology, reducing the risk posed by abusers by teaching women about technology safety and privacy and increasing women’s ability to help themselves and their children through the use of technology.

He noted that a number of the women expressed interest in helping other domestic violence victims receive the same kind of training.

“These women are reemerging after being severely restricted and technology is a way of communicating with the rest of the world. It is very therapeutic to be a helper, and it would be a good use of resources to have women who learned these skills to teach the next group of women entering shelters,” said Finn.

The evaluation also suggests that technology safety be addressed in all domestic cases that are evaluated.

“It must be part of the assessment process in every case. We talk about safety and two of the questions asked should be ‘What technology devices do you use?’ and ‘Is it possible your partner monitors your use of these devices?’ The most dangerous time for a woman is when she plans to leave a violent partner. Her plans can be intercepted if she uses a computer, cell phone or other technology,” said Finn.

Source: University of Washington

The anthropology world is all abuzz with a discovery in Africa that’s knocking scientists off their feet.

It’s the finding of 1.5 million-year-old fossilized human footprints in Kenya at Rutgers University’s Koobi Fora Field School.

Researchers say the ancient footprints show that some of the earliest humans walked just like we do today and also had anatomically modern feet.

The area around the human footprints was also littered with a range of animal prints, all discovered within two 1.5 million-year-old sedimentary layers near Ileret in northern Kenya.

Three footprint trails were found in the upper sediment layer. Two of them had two prints each, while the other had seven prints and numerous isolated prints. Perfectly preserved 15 feet below were one trail of two prints and a single isolated smaller print, possibly that of a child.

The discovery is detailed in this month’s issue of the journal Science.

What makes these footprints decidely human? Researchers say the big toe is parallel to the other toes, whereas in apes, it is separated for better grasping in the trees. What’s more, the footprints show a human-like arch and short toes, typically associated with walking upright. Other clues found to be within the range of modern humans were the size, spacing and depth of the impressions which provided estimates of weight, stride and gait.

The authors say the size of the footprints and their modern anatomical characteristics point to the hominid Homo ergaster, the name by which early Homo erectus is more generally known. This was the first hominid to have had the same body proportions (longer legs and shorter arms) as modern Homo sapiens. Other H. ergaster or H. erectus remains have been found in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa, at dates consistent with the Ileret footprints.